Technology has made the world run faster, increased productivity, and given us more stuff. Governments have organized themselves into massive institutions built to run more and more programs on behalf of citizens. And yet, for all this creation, our brave new world often seems cold, bureaucratic—something designed with processes and data, rather than people in mind. In short, it’s become something inhuman.
That’s the argument at the center of Steve Hilton’s new book More Human. A former director of strategy for David Cameron, Hilton is now the co-founder and CEO of a political data technology startup. Readers hoping to find gritty details of how Hilton restructured the British Conservative party will be disappointed. Instead of retelling old war stories, this book looks to the future, presenting Hilton’s vision of what human-centered changes would look like in the realms of healthcare, education, government, poverty, and business.
At its heart, Hilton’s critique of bureaucracy is astute. “Bureaucracy was a cycle that built itself, feeding back into its own further expansion and centralization.” In government, this cycle resulted in rule by a select group of individuals isolated in Washington (or, for the circle Hilton acknowledges he was part of, London), no matter the electoral outcome. Having worked within these circles, Hilton’s suggestions for change in how politics are financed, reported, and carried out are specific and well thought out. What he realizes is that all too often government focuses on numbers—money spent, programs started, people hired—rather than building relationships with individuals or “government officials regularly spending time with their ‘users’— that is, citizens.”
His vision of a decentralized political structure seems inconsistent with other sections of the book, though. To the American reader, it’s strange how much Hilton’s newly humane world relies upon government policy, one of the most heavy-handed and inhumane methods of fostering change. In certain sections, Hilton’s ideas seem like they aren’t fully thought out. He argues that, “we need the direct opposite of the mergers and corporate more and more of today,” but also supports a single-payer, market-provider solution. While Hilton hopes that “the right would…surely celebrate the enormous reduction in burdens on business,” the line rings out of touch.
As Hilton strays further from recommending reforms to make government more agile, some of his ideas seem more wishful thinking than policy proposal. For example, Hilton states forcefully in one change that, “there should be no such thing as the working poor.” Still, advocating a $15 per hour minimum wage without any analysis of where this extra money would come from will not do away with the problem of poverty.
After all, those working for businesses that are themselves barely making ends meet are more likely to see their hours cut or their positions terminated when the profit margin is not sufficient to cover the higher payroll costs. The choice isn’t less versus more. For some, it’s less versus nothing. While it may be an outrage that those working minimum wage will never earn enough to pull themselves from poverty, this problem cannot be solved by fiat.
This in the end may be why visionaries do better in business than government. A CEO can order his company to remake itself, but a government is full of moving pieces, necessary procedures, and pesky voters. Hilton’s suggestions for a more human world are valuable in that they expose the many ways in which big government and big industry have worked to insulate themselves from reform. However, his book falls short when offering prescriptive solutions. In the end, it seems that the most human reform grows organically.
